numbers, thus expressing, for example, 53 as inûp pingajugsâne arkanek-pingasut, 'on the third man on the first foot three.'[1] If we pass from the rude Greenlanders to the comparatively civilized Aztecs, we shall find on the Northern as on the Southern continent traces of early finger-numeration surviving among higher races. The Mexican names for the first four numerals are as obscure in etymology as our own. But when we come to 5 we find this expressed by macuilli; and as ma (ma-itl) means 'hand,' and cuiloa 'to paint or depict,' it is likely that the word for 5 may have meant something like 'hand-depicting.' In 10, matlactli, the word ma, 'hand,' appears again, while tlactli means half, and is represented in the Mexico picture-writings by the figure of half a man from the waist upward; thus it appears that the Aztec 10 means the 'hand-half' of a man, just as among the Towka Indians of South America 10 is expressed as 'half a man,' a whole man being 20. When the Aztecs reach 20 they call it cempoalli, 'one counting,' with evidently the same meaning as elsewhere, one whole man, fingers and toes.
Among races of the lower culture elsewhere, similar facts are to be observed. The Tasmanian language again shows the man stopping short at the reckoning of himself when he has held up one hand and counted its fingers; this appears by Milligan's list before mentioned, which ends with puggana, 'man,' standing for 5. Some of the West Australian tribes have done much better than this, using their word for 'hand,' marh-ra; marh-jin-bang-ga, 'half the hands,' is 5; marh-jin-bang-ga-gudjir-gyn, 'half the hands and one,' is 6, and so on; marh-jin-belli-belli-gudjir-jina-bang-ga, 'the hand on either side and half the feet,' is 15.[2] As an example from the Melanesian languages the Mare will serve; it reckons 10 as ome re rue tubenine, apparently 'the two
